Reddit Plans to Cut Promo Spending in Half, But There Are Environmental Ways to Use Promo that Some Clients Might Not Know About

Aug 13, 2023

Reddit, the giant social media network that sort of doubles as forums, news aggregators, and just about everything else you could imagine on the internet, announced that it's going to cut its promotional giveaways in favor of offering donations to non-profits to would-be gift recipients.

The project is called Karma Kash, a play on the website's "karma" system of upvoting and downvoting posts in accordance to user response. According to MediaPost, Reddit wants to cut its amount of physical promotional products in half, donating the rest of the 50% of its marketing budget to nonprofits.

Apparently, a lot of that inspiration came from the website's r/ZeroWaste subreddit, which specializes in minimizing wasted products, just like the title specifies. The r/ZeroWaste community had been discussing ways that companies could reduce or eliminate promotional products in favor of more sustainable methods.

Reddit is partnering with Givsly, which is dedicated to letting end-users log on and select a nonprofit to send funds to. The other half of the marketing budget will, presumably, be physical promotional items as usual.

Our partners at @Reddit announce their commitment to reducing swag by 50% in a new program called "Karma Kash." We are thrilled to support them through our Good Marketing platform to offer donations as an alternative to swag. Thank you @CampaignLiveUS: https://t.co/3ZbjsoR5FZ

— Givsly (@Givsly) May 3, 2023

But, it brings up the usual debate over promotional products' sustainability. It's less binary than some companies might think.

Yes, there is the concern that products become obsolete or they're not what the end-user wants, so they throw them in the trash. That's a problem! But, there are solutions beyond eliminating promotional items completely.

There are now platforms that allow end-users to use a code to select the exact product they want, thus ensuring that the branded item they receive isn't some one-size-fits-all promo item that will gather dust, or worse, end up in a landfill. They chose this item, so they will more likely use it and hold onto it.

The other solution comes in the apparel world especially, where companies are setting up apparel recycling programs or even donation programs where people can turn in their products that don't fit or have outdated logos, which will either end up being broken down to create new apparel or given to those in need.

What Reddit is doing isn't unique. Other companies will follow suit. But what distributors and other industry groups can do is educate their clients on how promotional products can still fit into a sustainable marketing budget and align with modern corporate ethics.

Brendan Menapace is the senior digital editor for Promo Marketing. While writing and editing stories come naturally to him, writing his own bio does not.